These kids have high rates of homelessness, poverty, pregnancy- but almost all go to college

By eCampus News staff and wire reports

October 2nd, 2012

Kalamazoo, Mich., is home to two area high schools―Central High and Loy Norrix, TakePart reports. The schools’ student bodies exemplify some distressing statistics―one in three falls below the national poverty line, one in 12 is homeless, and among its black students, the city has one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy in the state, The New York Times reports. But those statistics seem almost inconsequential in light of the fact that each of these students―as long as they graduate from high school―is getting free tuition to any public Michigan college or university of their choosing. How is that possible? The Times says it’s because of a mysterious scholarship program called the Kalamazoo Promise. Back in 2005, Janice M. Brown, the city’s superintendent of public schools, announced unnamed donors were pledging to pay the college tuition of every area student who graduated from the district’s high schools. And whoever those donors are, they’ve kept that promise every year since…